Enter your email to subscribe:

Though not directly aimed at aviation, Daniel Ikenson's new paper, Economic Self-Flagellation: How U.S. Antidumping Policy Subverts National Export Initiative, Trade Pol'y Analysis, May 31, 2011 (available here), is well worth reading. From the executive summary:

In January 2010, President Obama announced a goal of doubling U.S. exports in five years. The "National Export Initiative" has since become the centerpiece of the administration's trade policy agenda.

One major oversight of the NEI is its failure to include any sensible reforms to the U.S. antidumping regime. Four out of every five U.S. antidumping measures restrict imports of inputs consumed by downstream U.S. producers in their own production processes. Yet the statute forbids the administering authorities from considering the economic impact of antidumping restrictions on those firms or on the economy at large. Such restrictions raise the costs of production for downstream firms, rendering them less competitive at home and abroad.